In many respects, the traditional model of poetry publication in which individual author collections on paper take center stage strikes me as outmoded, capitalistic, and more than a little self-indulgent. Why else would my first reaction on receiving a copy of my new chapbook be to pose with it for a selfie? That said, this particular chapbook (or “pamphlet”, for you Brits) is a beautifully made thing, and I am over the moon with the production quality and the cover painting by my friend Steven Sherrill, which is such a good fit with the contents. Seven Kitchens Press chapbooks are very artisanal indeed, and I’m quite sure Ron Mohring (himself a terrific poet, by the way, who chooses to spend most of his free time and money promoting others’ work) sews them up on the kitchen table. He would probably give them away if he could, but $9.00 is a very nominal price. Read more about the chapbook here, and order a copy, if you’re so inclined, here. If you play the banjo, record and send me an MP3 of a banjo instrumental that I can use in an audio recording and I’ll send you a free copy. If you’d like to review it, email me with your postal address and I’ll ask Ron to send you a copy.
It might be outmoded, but there’s still something deeply satisfying about holding a tangible book in one’s hands — perhaps especially so when someone else has taken the leap of faith of designing it, printing it, etc. All of us old bibliophiles can’t help feeling that way, I think, even though we recognize the amazing interconnective and creative possibilities of online / digital work.
Er, sorry, that was me.
Yes, that’s very true. And certainly, for me at least, it’s not an either/or, but a both/and. I do not expect digital artifacts to be nearly as long-lived as paper ones. Formats and media are simply changing too rapidly, and the days of this fossil-fuel-based civilization are numbered, anyway. Part of me also wants to press my poems into clay tablets and bake them into pottery, as the Sumerians did.